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Rutgers AD Julie Hermann calls Louisville "homecoming" surreal

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Rutgers athletic director Julie Hermann celebrated a "homecoming" when Rutgers played at Louisville, the school she spent 15 years at as an administrator before moving to Piscataway
(William Perlman/The Star-Ledger)

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – For the first time in 16 years, Julie Hermann had a new perspective last night from the pressbox of a Louisville football game: The visiting athletic director’s suite.

But Rutgers’ first-year athletic director wasn’t letting nostalgia – she spent the previous 15 years as an athletic administrator for Louisville, rising to senior associate athletic director and No. 2 in command -- get in the way of what matters most to her now.

“All of this is such is such a big part of my life,” Hermann said of her return to Louisville prior to Rutgers’ game with the No. 8-ranked Cardinals. “It was 15 years of helping (Cardinals athletic director) Tom Jurich in any way to get everything done that he has accomplished here. So it’s a source of huge pride. It was incredible to be part of it, just as it’s incredibly exciting to be part of Rutgers now.

“But (Louisville) is in the past for me. People have been asking me `are you going to struggle who to root for?’ And I’ve said `Are you nuts? I am all things Rutgers now.' ”

There is a part of Hermann, though, who found her return “home” to be a bit strange. Until May, she was still helping run Louisville’s athletic department.

So she hasn’t been detached all that long.

“It is surreal to be on the other side at Papa John’s Stadium,” she said. “I took so much pride in being part of the building project at Louisville. I’m a builder at heart. So part of what I love about Rutgers is that it’s an opportunity to build something that’s really special.

“It’s the second project like this I get to be in on in my life and I hope it’s the last one.”

This may be her last business trip to the city, too, since Louisville is headed to the ACC next year while Rutgers is Big Ten-bound. The chances of the football teams meeting again – outside of a bowl – is remote.

But what Hermann helped build at Louisville is a blueprint for what she hopes to do at Rutgers. The Cardinals play basketball in the fairly-new $285 million Yum Center, completed a $75-million football stadium expansion two years ago, have started construction on a $18 million soccer stadium and have a newly-expanded baseball stadium adjacent to Papa John’s Stadium.

And she is coming off a year in which Louisville’s men’s basketball team won the national title, with the women’s team reaching the Final Four and the football team beating Florida in the Sugar Bowl.

‘They’re different schools,” she said of Rutgers and Louisville. “But the truth is the Louisville model is a model for how to build an athletic department for any other athletic department.

“Tom’s ability to build this, to take the time to build it right, to be compliant, nobody’s cheating, to do it with class and integrity … it’s a natural model for all athletic departments. There are very few places like this. When we got here in 1998 it was a mid-major, commuter, basketball school. And now you see what it is today.”

That’s what made her two worlds colliding – old and new – so surreal.

“To have the schools meet in this game under these circumstances, you almost can’t take it in,” she said.